Danny died of what he knew.
Danny, the man who knew too much.
I am convinced that his was a journalist's death-dead not only because of what he was, but because of what he was looking for, and perhaps finding, and planning to write about.
Isn't that, incidentally, what President Pervez Musharraf himself said when, the day after the murder, in an astounding, angry outburst, he exclaimed that Daniel Pearl had been "over intrusive"-too curious, sticking his nose in places he shouldn't have?
Didn't Musharraf give it away when, in a comment cited in the Washington Post (among others) on 23 February 2002, he dared to declare, "Perhaps Daniel Pearl was over inquisitive; a mediaperson should be aware of the dangers of getting into dangerous areas; unfortunately, he got over-involved in intelligence games."
That's my hypothesis.
That's the conclusion I have come to.
So the question then becomes: Why? What had Pearl discovered, or what was he in the process of discovering, that condemned him to death? What is the stolen secret that, for his captors, was out of the question for him to walk away with?
The relationship between al-Qaida and the ISI, of course.
The tight web of relations between the two organizations, the two worlds.
This holy alliance that condemns and executes him-we can presume that, yes, he was on their trail, and that, precisely, was his fatal error.
But all of that is not saying much.
You don't execute a man because he evokes in a general way the ties between an intelligence agency and a terrorist organization.
You don't expend so much effort to kill him, you don't send an entire syndicate into action because he might develop some thesis about the underbelly of an important country.
The real question, obviously, is what, precisely, had he discovered in all this that was new and that would have caused difficulties for all of them?
This is where the reign of the uncertain begins.
This is where witnesses are rare and, if they exist, they are silent, or out to disinform.
So, like a detective following his hunches, I move forward now, sifting through clues and speculations, for the over-riding truth.
I have two hypotheses, in fact.
Two distinct hypotheses, in no way contradictory.
But first of all-a question of method-one last detour. Daniel Pearl's schedule in the weeks, the days, the hours preceding his kidnapping. Who he saw. What he read. The articles he wrote and those he was working on. This intrigue, in a word, woven with the threads of a life, where (as in a tapestry, is hidden the motive that secretly inspires it) lies, quite probably, the explanation for his death.
CHAPTER 3 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF DANIEL PEARL.
First, my sources: The account of Pearl's fixer in Islamabad, Asif Farooqi, given during our meeting in his office at the Japanese press agency.
A conversation with Jamil Yusuf, former businessman now heading Karachi's Citizen-Police Liaison Committee.
That of another Pakistani, from Peshawar, who asked not to be identified but whose information I have good reason to believe is credible. Let's call him Abdullah, and let's say also that he's the kind of journalist who works under his own name for the Pakistani press and, anonymously, for visiting journalists-both bold things to do in Pakistan.
And the memorandum written 27 January, four days after the kidnapping, by Mariane Pearl and Asra Nomani, Danny's colleague and tenant of the house where the couple stayed in Karachi: This twenty-page memorandum, written in great urgency, before anyone knew the tragic outcome of the kidnapping, sheds the most light on Danny's movements and is obviously the most precise, the most precious source.
Daniel Pearl, I repeat, arrived in Pakistan for the first time in October, just before the beginning of the American air strikes in Afghanistan. He stayed there for two months. He wrote three or four major articles. He returned at the end of November to Bombay, which was his actual base. On 15 December he returned to Islamabad for what would be the final time.
He is alone this time.
Mariane, pregnant, stays in India for a few more days.
"It's sad," says a Pakistani Dawn journalist Danny and Asif run into in the bar of a grand hotel in the embassy quarter. "It's almost Christmas and you'll be alone." Danny smiles, ever faithful to his penchant for openness on the question. "Oh, Christmas-you know I'm not Christian, I'm Jewish. The Jews aren't that big on Christmas."
With Steve LeVine, the Journal's central Asia correspondent visiting Pakistan, he starts an investigation on the risks of the transfer of nuclear know-how from Pakistan to Afghanistan and the Taliban. In particular, the two journalists are tracking an NGO supposedly engaged in humanitarian programs but which, in reality, serves as a cover for this kind of trafficking: the Ummah Tameer e-Nau, whose honorary president happens to be General Hamid Gul, a former head of the ISI. I've come across his name often over the past year. Pearl is also looking into a certain Dr. Bashiruddin Mahmood, a Pakistani scientist won over to the Islamist cause who, in August, had visited Osama bin Laden.
On the 23rd or the 24th, he starts a second investigation, without LeVine, into the illegal trafficking of electronic equipment between Afghanistan and Pakistan. He goes to Peshawar. He hangs around the vast Karkhano Market, where he finds imports from Afghanistan of almost everything the Taliban prohibits, but which he discovers, to his surprise, they now make a fat profit on by exporting: from a country of bearded men, Gillette razors; from the country where smoking is prohibited, Marlboro cigarettes; from the radically iconoclastic country where images are forbidden, all sorts of video cassettes, and the latest model Sony televisions. What hypocrisy! For the sarcastic journalist he knows how to be when the subject lends itself, a godsend.
The next day he starts a third investigation into the fundamentalist groups Musharraf has just outlawed, but which continue to operate in Kashmir, and, he thinks, also in Lahore and Karachi. For that investigation he goes to Bawahalpur where he plans to interview Masood Azhar, the head of Jaish and, I recall one final time, the friend, master, and tutor of Omar Sheikh. But Masood has been arrested again, along with other militants whose calls for the anti-American jihad have begun to clash with the image of Musharraf's grand antiterrorist alliance. So he has to settle for Masood's brother whom, incidentally, he suspects of involvement with the Air India hijackers of Kandahar. He also visits the Jaish offices which are supposed to have been shut down but which he notes continue to function rather openly, recruiting and organizing meetings. The visit is short and somewhat tense. He stays only thirty-six hours in Bawahalpur.
On the 27th, his article co-written with LeVine on nuclear secrets having appeared three days earlier, Danny is contacted by a shady individual who pretends to have read the piece and to have in his possession a case of fissionable material from a Ukrainian nuclear power plant, which he is ready to sell for $100,000. Danny smells a scam. In Karachi he contacts a staff member of a large Western embassy who is familiar with these things, who tells him not to follow up. But Danny is sufficiently intrigued to check his notes on the subject. It's strange, he tells Asif, how little impact our article has had. Maybe the timing, just before Christmas. Or the tone. Or maybe, let's be honest, we've got less than Seymour Hersh had in his 29 October New Yorker article, "The Risks to Pakistan's Nuclear Arsenal," or than Douglas Frantz and David Rhode had in the 28 November New York Times article "Two Pakistanis Linked to Papers on Anthrax Weapons," or than Molly Moore and Kamran Kahn in their 12 December Washington Post article, "Two Nuclear Experts Briefed Bin Laden, Pakistanis Say." It bothers him not to have the goods, or to have less than The Washington Post, The New York Times, or The New Yorker. It was even more annoying because for the final few days, Farooqi remembers, he was getting e-mails from his paper urging him to move, to get some information, to be more exclusive. The spirit of competition. The pressure of the information-market. He decides, without LeVine, to return to investigation number one.
On the 31st of December, Mariane arrives.
He's there at the Karachi airport to meet her, happy as a kid.
The next day, New Year's, they fly to Islamabad, meet up with Asif, and settle into their usual guest house, Chez Soi, at the top of Murree Road.
In Islamabad with Asif, he starts a fourth investigation, this time on something very different-a comparison of television programs in India and Pakistan, and how they inflame the passions of both countries and affect the culture of war. What is the war's lexicon? What kind of images, and what kind of commentary? Is there a journalistic responsibility for the military escalation between the two nuclear powers?
On the 6th, an article in the Boston Globe reports on a little-known figure of Islamist radicalism, Sheikh Mubarak Ali Shah Gilani, leader of the sect al-Fuqrah, and the guru of "shoe bomber" Richard Colvin Reid. It's the kind of story Pearl loves. Gilani is exactly the type of character he is looking for in his investigation covering the outlawed Islamist groups. Find me someone, he tells Asif, who can contact this Gilani! Find me someone who can take us to him!
On the 7th, Asif calls one of his colleagues whose name-bizarrely- never appears in the official accounts of the investigation or even in the press. He is Zafar Malik, of the Urdu newspaper Jang, a journalist who is very close to the jihadist groups engaged in the armed struggle in Afghanistan and Kashmir. "Maybe," he tells Asif, "maybe I have what you're looking for. His name is Arif, I've met him four or five times. The first time was a year ago in the offices of Harkat ul-Mujahideen in Rawalpindi . . . I don't know him well but I'll see if contact is possible . . . "
Two days later, the 9th, Zafar Malik succeeds in making contact. Danny hires a taxi that picks him up in front of Chez Soi. Accompanied by Asif, they take Pindhora Road to the midpoint between Islamabad and Rawalpindi. There, he finds a man of about twenty, bearded, wearing the traditional shalwar kameez, who introduces himself as the boss of a clothing manufacturer in Rawalpindi. This is the Arif that Malik spoke of. He gets into the taxi with Danny and Asif. Of course, he says, Gilani . . . Nothing easier than to go see Gilani. I'll take you there right now, to his house in Chaklala, in the suburbs, right near the Islamabad military air base. (Always this proximity, both symbolic and physical, of the two worlds: that of Islamism and jihad on one side, and the army and the ISI on the other.) Except, when they arrive, the house is empty and, according to the neighbors, its owner has just left for Chak Shazad, a quarter on the opposite side of the city. They don't know the exact address. Was Gilani getting nervous? Had he heard about the article in the Boston Globe and started to worry? Or is this the trap they have begun to lay for Danny?
Still, on the 9th, first at 13:58, then again at 15:34, Danny calls former Afghanistan mujahid, ISI agent, and bin Laden pilot, Khalid Khawaja, the confirmed Islamist, whom he visited in his office upon first arriving in Islamabad. He had been given Khawaja's name and address in Washington. "The man is complicated," they said. "He's the one who practically announced the attack on the World Trade Center in a declaration on CBS, in July 2001. But he's paradoxical, provocative, he has interesting contacts, he might be able to help you." So, Danny went to see him. Khawaja is even one of the first people he contacted when he arrived in Pakistan. And to his surprise they got along well. Danny didn't dislike him-this secular Islamist, this beardless fundamentalist, this anti-American steeped in American culture and even molded by it, who embodied all the ambivalence, all the hardened hatred of the most radical part of the Muslim world toward the West. So, now, Danny calls him again. And as he has just read in the Globe that Khawaja is a friend not only of bin Laden, but also of the famous Gilani, he asks him, "Do you have any way to help me meet Gilani?"
The 10th, at 12:21, he calls Khawaja again. The conversation is short, 37 seconds. Two hypotheses. The first: Gilani again, still Gilani- he learned the night before through one of Asif 's sources that Gilani had married a cousin of Khawaja's wife, and even if he has since married a few other women, he has never divorced her-Danny learned, in other words, that the two men have closer ties than indicated by the Boston Globe. So he calls the former pilot to ask again, insistently: "Gilani, this is very important to me-I have to leave in a few days and I want this meeting with Gilani before I leave." The second hypothesis: Danny's investigation of the transfer of nuclear expertise, something I myself wonder if Khawaja isn't well informed about; and if I ask myself this question, I imagine that a journalist of Danny's caliber asked the question before me. Following this hypothesis, he calls Khawaja to ask him not just about Gilani, but about Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmoud and Abdul Majid, the two nuclear scientists most up-to-date on the techniques of uranium and plutonium enrichment and whom the CIA knows had contacts in August with bin Laden and his lieutenant, the Egyptian Ayman Zawahiri.
Pearl doesn't lose sight, in the meantime, of investigation number 2, into the culture of war and propaganda. So, still on the 10th, he meets Naeem Bukhari, a courageous and independent television producer, who tells him, "You should follow this Pakistani television crew-they are shooting right now, some man-in-the-street interviews on the theme, 'What do you think of the situation? How do you see your Indian neighbors? Do you think Pakistan should do more, speak and act more strongly?' You should follow them and see how they work." Which Danny does. He spends the better part of the day, pencil in hand, with the crew. He is horrified by the way the journalist asks his questions-appalled at how the tone of the questions themselves orient the answers. Shameful! he says. What kind of television station tells people: "It's difficult to love your country without hating your neighbors"? That "A good Pakistani must scorn Indians and Jews"? Isn't it just a disguised way of inflaming passions, of calling for murder? Why not just say up front "produced and directed by the army"?
Still on the 10th, in the afternoon, while Danny and Asif are in a bazaar in Rawalpindi, Asif gets a call from Arif, the man who took them the day before to Gilani's empty house. Essentially, Arif says: "Tell your boss not to worry, he's got a raincheck. I know someone close to Gilani who will set up the meeting you're looking for." This someone, supposedly called Bashir, is in reality, Omar Sheikh.
On the 11th, the big meeting with Bashir, alias Omar, takes place. A taxi, like two days before. Another meeting on Pindhora Road. Arif meets them at the same intersection, but this time he is accompanied by a bearded friend, who remains silent as Arif takes them to the Hotel Akbar, room 411, where Omar is waiting. The long conversation to gain his confidence. The club sandwiches. The iced coffee brought up by the little man in the djellaba. The atmosphere so dreary that Danny oddly doesn't notice the ominous aspect, or if he has, it hasn't discouraged him from his quest for Gilani.
"Bizarre, this Shabir," he says to his fixer as they leave. "Why do you say 'Shabir'?" asks Asif. "He said his name was Bashir." "No, I distinctly heard him say 'Shabir,'" says Pearl. In fact they are both right. Because Omar got tripped up in his own lie. One time he said Shabir and another, Bashir. So that the next day, trying to cover the slip, he signs his first e-mail with the odd, rather un-Pakistani name, "Bashir Ahmed Shabir Chowdry." It should have raised suspicions, if not for Pearl, at least for Asif. Was this Asif 's real mistake?
On the 12th, Danny is still in Rawalpindi, in the smugglers market. Mariane wants a CD player. So he asks for a CD player. But when he is ready to pay, he asks for a receipt. What are you talking about? asks the merchant. How can you expect a receipt when you're in the smugglers' market and you're buying stolen goods? The scene will be repeated throughout the day, all over Rawalpindi. Danny, a man of principle, demanding the receipt, and the merchants, incapable of giving him one, persistently refusing. Mariane, in the end, is deprived of her CD player. And his ongoing investigation of the contraband trade between Afghanistan and Pakistan (an excellent first article in the series has already appeared on the 9th, three days earlier) continues steadily to enrich itself with experience.
From the night of the 12th to the 16th, he's in Peshawar. Does he want to go into Afghanistan, like fellow journalist Michel Peyrard? Is he looking for traces of al-Qaida and its ties with Pashtun gangs in the tribal zones? I don't think so. Let's not forget, Daniel Pearl was not a war correspondent. Proposed an assignment in Afghanistan in November, he answered, "No, that's not my field. You need special training to be a war reporter. I don't have that training." Why would he have changed his mind? Why would he do now, what he didn't want to do yesterday? He's smart enough to know he's ill-trained for the job-why would he want to play the hero now? No, I think there are two reasons he's here. His ongoing investigation into the smuggling networks between Afghanistan and Pakistan. And the other is for the story we know he was conscious of having missed in part, the one that would inevitably take on full dimension in Peshawar, the strategic center of Afghanistan-Pakistan relations: the investigation of the possible transference of nuclear technologies organized by elements of the ISI for al-Qaida.
On the 18th he is back in Islamabad, where he will stay till the 22nd. These are the days, we recall, he receives a series of e-mails from "Bashir," alias Omar. These are the days, in other words, when the Gilani trap begins to close around him. Asif finds him suddenly strange. At once feverish and evasive. Enthusiastic yet absent. He's hiding something. Asif can't get anything out of him, but he can see that something has happened and Danny's hiding it.
"I'm going to Karachi," the reporter finally admits when cornered. "Why Karachi? Whatever for?" "Because from there I'll take a plane to Dubai and then the United States." "But there are flights from Islamabad! Why go by Karachi?" "All right," Danny says, giving up, "Let's say I've got something else to do in Karachi. I have to meet Gilani there, OK? But it's a secret."
Asif is suddenly very ill at ease. Almost angry. First of all, why the secrecy? Why go to Karachi without him? Why split up now, only a few days before his departure? He has become attached to this enthusiastic, principled American, so different from the Americans he's known. And there's another thing: he is the one who introduced Danny to Arif, who brought him to Bashir. When he thinks about it, it's the first time in his life that he's introduced one of his sources to a client. And that makes him feel, without knowing how to explain it, vaguely uneasy, almost afraid.
On the 22nd, Pearl is in Karachi.
On the 23rd, at 11:30, he sees Syed Zulfikar Shah, head of immigration at the city's airport. Then, between noon and 13:15, brigadier Tariq Mahmoud, director of civil aviation. Mariane, from her memorandum, speaks of two interviews on the issue of cyber-crime. I myself saw the subject of the second. He was cautious, of course, embarrassed, when he understood why I was knocking on his door. But we did speak. I asked him what he had discussed that day with the murdered American journalist. And my feeling is that here again Danny was interested in the movements of Richard Colvin Reid, thus still and always, although indirectly, Gilani.
We know the rest.
We know the schedule, hour by hour, from the end of the day of the 23rd. Between 14:30 and 15:30, Randall Bennett, head of security at the American embassy, now posted in Madrid, told him: "Don't go to this meeting . . . we don't like the way it looks." To the Marriott on foot. A phone call at 15:30 to Steph Laraich, chief of police at the French Consulate, who never found out how Danny got his number and still, to this day, regrets not having been there to take the call himself and say: "Watch out! Don't do it! Or at least, arrange a cover, a car to follow you, something." Danny makes another call at 16:00, to Asif, in Islamabad, who remembers an uncharacteristic anxiety in his voice. "I'm suddenly asking myself, is it safe to see this Gilani?" And Asif, not wanting to seem jealous or vexed: "He's a public person, not well known, but public; if you meet him in a public place, I guess it's OK; one thing though, Mariane; don't take Mariane; the public place might be a mosque or a madrasa, and it wouldn't be a good idea if Mariane were with you, dressed European and pregnant."
Mariane and Asra Nomani from 16:00 to 17:00. The cybercafe in Lakson Square Building, because he's still on the Reid affair. A telephone call to Jamil Yusuf at 17:10. The rendezvous a few minutes later at his office in Governor's House, where Yusuf will also tell Danny he doesn't feel right about the 19:00 rendezvous at the Village Garden. A call to Asra, who is hosting the Pearl's farewell dinner. "Start without me, I have one more appointment. I'll be there soon . . . " And then the Village Garden, finally, where he leaves Nasir Abbas's taxi, and where, at exactly 19:00, a car, maybe followed by another, and preceded by a motorcycle, stops for him.
If we add it all up, Daniel Pearl was obsessed by two great questions during his last four or five weeks, and I think we must look where he was looking, to uncover the reasons he was put to death-to understand, we have to follow him and try to resume those two, final investigations.
The elusive Gilani.
And the nuclear question.
CHAPTER 4 THE ASSASSINS ARE AMONG US.
Gilani.
Why this fixation on Pir Mubarak Shah Gilani?
Why him, Pir Mubarak Shah Gilani, rather than, say, Masood Azhar, or Ramzi bin al-Shibh, or even bin Laden who, during those weeks, was roaming between western Afghanistan, the tribal zones of Pakistan, and, perhaps, Karachi?
It's been said: Richard Reid.
It's been said-Pearl himself thought-that the "shoe bomber" on the Air France Paris to Miami flight was a disciple of Gilani; that it is he, Gilani, who may have given him the go-ahead for action; and that Pearl was interested in Gilani because he was investigating the case of Richard Reid.
Fine.
But was Richard Reid really worthy of so much attention? Would Pearl have searched so thoroughly, mobilized so many contacts and so much energy, taken such risks, if it was just a question of reconstructing the itinerary of a London car thief, even one who has gone through a conversion to terrorism?
Who is this man, who is this mysterious character that Pearl, on the last day of his stay in Pakistan, ignoring all the rules of security he knew better than anyone, wanted so much to interview, even if for just a few minutes?
Moinuddin Haider, Minister of the Interior, at the time of my November trip, pretended he had never heard of Gilani, nor his movement, the al-Fuqrah, literally, "The Poor," or, better still, "The Impoverished."
The Brigadier Javed Iqbal Cheema, his assistant, had developed a slightly different line, but one that didn't get me any further: "What is this business about going through fifteen intermediaries to get to Gilani? When we arrested Gilani, he told us, 'OK, gentlemen, I am available, I am not underground; if there's a journalist who wants to see me, I'd be thrilled; but this Mr. Pearl never called me, he never telephoned.' Now I, Brigadier Javed Cheema, put the question to you: Why did Mr. Pearl never call Gilani?" And when I immediately said: "If it's that easy to interview Gilani, you're on! If Daniel Pearl's sole fault was that he didn't ask politely, I'm asking you now: could you set this up for me? with your help, could I meet Mr. Gilani?" Cheema became rather flustered and suddenly found all kinds of reasons to carefully sidestep the question.
We recall as well the episode of Hamid Mir, the official biographer and interviewer of bin Laden, and of his odd way of ignoring all polite conventions, especially by referring to a request I had never made as a pretext for canceling an appointment that he had actually confirmed.
I took up the investigation from there.
I began again, at the point where Pearl had left off.
Like him, I went to Chakala, near the Islamabad air base where the mysterious Gilani was supposed to have resided but where I found a house that was not only empty and closed but, according to the neighbors, had been sold to "a Kuwaiti" who planned on "doing some remodeling."
I went to Chak Shazad where I saw his other house; the one Asif, Arif, and Danny had searched for in vain during their outing on the 9th-not as nice as the first one, a one-storey dwelling with walls of exposed bricks, windows protected by painted wood shutters, abandoned as well.
I also went to Lahore, to the old city, where Gilani's real, much nicer home, is located, surrounded by high walls and guarded like a fortress- as is the grand and prestigious madrassa of Jamia e-Namia, which has a dome engraved with the names of Gilani's first American disciples, converted in the early '80s, as described in Farah Stockman's article in the Boston Globe which had made such an impression on Pearl.
I met one of the disciples of the master, Wasim Yousouf, son of a Rawalpindi merchant, for whom belonging to al-Fuqrah is an honor, and who talked to me about it willingly.
And then, finally, I went to the United States, the source, as we shall see, of some of the trails that lead to Gilani and to his organization.
1. The first thing I realized is that Gilani is the head of a small group. A very small group, one that is little known. Nothing like the great jihadist organizations I've encountered, or that Pearl was investigating during the few days he spent in Peshawar. Nothing comparable to the Lashkar, Jaish e-Mohammed and other Harkat ul-Mujahideen that were, or at least aspired to be, mass organizations. In terms of goals or recruiting, nothing like these vast structures, these armies fighting for control of the people of the martyrs of Allah. A few hundred members. Maybe two hundred, with the core following concentrated solely in the city of Lahore where Gilani has his principle mission, his four wives, and the places where he teaches.
Outside this small following, the man expresses himself very little. He's a secretive person who claims to be a direct descendant of the Prophet and whose last interview, prior to Pearl's interest in him, dated from the early '90s. In short, this native of Kashmir, this forceful Islamist, who, in the rare photos of him that I've been able to find, appears to be a sort of giant, imposing, with a reddish beard, and a look of unbearable intensity, is the leader of a sect, with followers who change their names when they are admitted, as in all sects and in the training camps as well. (Richard Reid, for example, became Abdul Rauf-"Brother Abdul.") And, as the head of the sect, he is a sort of guru whose functions bear little in common with others such as Nizamuddin Shamzai and Masood Azhar, the mass orators who preach the jihad in full view of the press, in popular assemblies that are often gigantic.
It's not surprising that the Pakistani newspapers, so prolix when it comes to other groups, seemed caught off guard the day after the kidnapping, when this group suddenly appeared. Not surprising either that Moinuddin Haider, Minister of the Interior, told me that before the Pearl affair, he had actually never heard of al-Fuqrah.
2. This small, obscure, and mysterious sect nonetheless has ties, as they all do, with the intelligence services. Perhaps not with Haider, but with the services most certainly. They may be unknown in the police files, that's possible-but ties to the country's "invisible power" is without a doubt.
Omar admitted as much when, after the Rangers came to arrest Gilani at his home in Rawalpindi, he said that the sect's chief-to whom he had a brief introduction when he took his first guerilla training-had rendered "unexplained services to Islam and to Pakistan" (The News, 15 February 2002).
Khalid Khawaja, the former pilot for Bin Laden and ex-ISI officer who did not wish to see me, but told my fixer over the phone that we should "watch out for Gilani," because the guru was sick of being "mixed up in this unfortunate Pearl affair all the time"-Khawaja, in declarations made right after the kidnapping, when he and Gilani happened to be under scrutiny of the FBI, confirmed Gilani's ties to the services, probably to protect himself and to protect his friend (Dawn, 23 February 2002).
Same message from Vince Cannistraro, former counter-terrorism chief of the CIA now working in television, who immediately said, in the first feverish days of the search for Pearl, and, for once, without the usual cant: Gilani is "untouchable" because he counts "on the board of his organization" several "senior ISI officials" (NewsMax.com wires, 31 January 2002).
And as for Gilani himself, when the Rawalpindi police came looking for him, he did exactly what "Tariq" told me all the jihadists do when they are arrested: He immediately changed from his venerable master persona to that of the Mafioso who's been nabbed and he gave up the names of his contacts as well as a house secret or two, and declared that, during the '80s, he had informed the services of what he saw and heard during his then-frequent stays in the United States-in exchange for which, Pir Mubarak Shah Gilani, Daniel Pearl's last known contact, his last appointment before the kidnapping, the man he wanted to see and thought he would see when he arrived at the Village Garden, was out on the street after a few days, and would never be bothered again (The News, 31 January 2002).
3. Gilani's al-Fuqrah is also linked to Osama bin Laden, like most of these groups, though probably in a more intimate and organic way.
Gilani, of course, denies it. He denies it today, now that he is in the limelight. But Khawaja told CBS News reporter George Crile, whom he led to Gilani a few days after Pearl's death: "I am telling you, I am sure of one thing, Osama does not have even one of his followers as committed as Sheikh Mubarak Gilani" (CBSNews.com, 13 March 2002). And, in a Canadian TV film shot in Khartoum in 1993, we see (Mira L. Boland, "Sheikh Gilani's American disciples," The Weekly Standard, 18 March 2002) the boss of al-Fuqrah at the "grand summit of terrorism," sponsored by the Sudanese strongman of the time, Hassan el-Turabi.
There are Afghan and Iranian mullahs. Delegates from George Habache's movement and Nayef Hawatmeh's. People from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, from the Lebanese Hezbollah. The aristocracy of world terrorism. And also, hand in hand with Gilani, a Saudi entrepreneur, little known at the time, veteran of the anti-Soviet jihad, Osama bin Laden.
Is it true, the journalist asks the Pakistani, that the two men recently arrested in relation to an investigation of plans to attack Indian targets in Toronto are your followers? And he responds, with an unbearable mixture of guile and insolence: one or two of them, yes . . . I admit that one or two of them studied at our school in Lahore, but they're the exception . . . because, "once people join our university, they become real good citizens; they stop smoking, they stop stealing, they stop living on welfare, that is what I teach them."
Bin Laden, at the time, is beginning to weave his network. In Gilani, he has an ally, an antenna in New York, and perhaps more.